weather
summary
Performance — Laura Briggs, Clara Guyton, MaryGrace Phillips, Hez Stalcup + Nicholas Surbey
Choreography — MaryGrace Phillips in collaboration with dancers
Sculpture + Installation — Justin Rabideau
Sound —Jared Kelley + Erin Palovick
Costumes — Anicka + Marian Austin
Photos — Kelly Blackmon
April 2018
at The Work Room
Presented by MaryGrace Phillips and The Lucky Penny
Produced by MaryGrace Phillips with Danny Davis + Protect Awesome and The Lucky Penny
in partnership Fulton County Arts Council
As part of this performance, we also did a free, live in-process performance during regular school hours for Grady Public High School. This particular performance was followed by Q&A.
In this full-length work, the dancers and I explored the nature of chaos. Both as an external force of nature we see manifest as Weather, but also in the nature of the landscapes of our lives.
This duet was a study of the larger work-in-process. WEATHER — a collaboration between MaryGrace Phillips, Justin Rabideau, Danny Davis, Jared Kelley, Erin Palovick, and dancers Laura Briggs, Clara Guyton, Hez Stalcup, Nicholas Surbey + Jeremiah Thompson. It premiered in Atlanta in April 2018.
June 23 + 24, 2017
at the Schwarz Center for Performing Arts
Presented by The Lucky Penny
selected process notes
Simplicity as the god of Chaos.
small difference (now) = big difference (future)
chaos —> phenomena
The end may not be at the beginning. It doesn’t follow, the middle is somewhere. The initial states do determine what happens. It does follow. It is the scale, the growth, the surprise curve that is surprising.
We do not seek to explain the seed of instability with chaos, but rather to describe the growth of uncertainty after the initial seed is sown. — the why is not asked.
“Merely moving our hands would affect the atmosphere all the way around the planet.” — Edgar Allan Poe
the exploration of what-if’s is left to math and literature (i.e. if I hadn’t raised my hands)… because we have access to only one realization of reality.
“the study of chaos motivates us to establish utility without any hope of achieving perfection.” - from the tiny chaos book
the larger it gets the faster it grows.
of getting closer + closer but never quite arriving
often, as our uncertainty grows too large, it starts to fold back on itself.
chaos can look random but it is not random.
attractor - the origin is our first attractor. explore origin as the inevitable, unreachable destination.
small uncertainty will grow exponentially fast in a chaotic system.
exponential growth surpasses any linear growth.
you’re not a dancer, you’re an atom.
“ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone”
cactus flower. Sun + Moon.
Petrichor.
chaos feels threatening
an unraveling that
happens against us
we fear because of our
humble powerlessness.
but what if, it’s synchronous,
what if, everything is always working out.
what are you touching? how do you touch it? what does it mean that you touch it?
immediately feel how this is different from all the other things. light emanates from all sides. your back.
The Sun is your spine
a compassionate warm presence. we all crave to shine on our lives. the sun isn’t happy, like a clown. it IS. the sun is the lighthouse in your ribcage.
continue to find simple moments in which you surrender to gravity instead of fighting against it.
